the GOP's reputation out there in the electorate, which, no thanks to him, is somewhere just above tapeworm and just below whale excrement. Do you disagree?
Actually, I don't think it's changed that much. What did change had more to do with corrupt politicians in Congress than Bush, even, believe it or not.
There is a core group of people who believe that the only problem with American government is that the Democrats aren't in every single office in the land. Some of them are even ostensibly intelligent. I have talked with some.
(The same can be said of some Republicans, of course. And need I even mention that most third-party members believe that even more strongly about their parties?)
Then there's a core group of people who are serious Conservatives. Note that said group helped shoot down Bush's baby, the Immigration Bill. God knows if that bill was good or not. The Senate tried to shove it through faster than anyone could read it, so the safe bet for me is, "No! If the bill was so good, then they would have released it to the public, and it would have 'sold itself.'" Similar groups shot down Harriet Miers and DPW. These were all Bush defeats, handed to him by the Conservative grassroots.
So, in Bush's disapproval ratings, you have those who never DID approve of Bush, simply because he was a Republican; you have those who disapprove because he ran as a Conservative, but that turned out to mean nothing but lipservice to social conservatives; you have those who reserved judgment and decided they don't like him or the job he's doing.
Note that Congress' ratings are even worse!
I think that the GOP has lost some of its luster -- among its BASE, no less -- because it continued to support Bush when he veered far from conservative principles, not simply because Bush ran as a Republican.
It's a fine line, but it's an important one. Ron Paul, for example, whatever the outcome, won't lose votes because he has R by his name, IMO. He's distanced himself from Bush, consistently, where Bush has distanced himself from libertarian/Goldwater Conservatism, Constitutionalism, whatever you want to call it.
That's a good thing, if you support Ron Paul, for example.
I think many in the general public have loosened party affiliation vs. say 50 years ago. Many more people are registered Independent, DTS, symbolic third party, whatever. I think people are seeing parties more and more as "necessary evil" marketing machines, but not principled ideological groups.
Parties have been losing trust. This is another step; that includes both Bush the Republican and the Democratic Congress at the moment.
